See the Halcyon fishing
O'er the glassy stream
All the air's transparent,
What a sunny gleam!
This is lovely weather,
'Tis a Halcyon day,
Sure a storm's impending
Let us haste away.

Through so many years
did I suffer
the agony
of keeping our secret—
that even now
I cannot bear
to let the truth be known.

In this high room, my room of quiet space,
Sun-yellow softened for my happiness,
I learn of you, Wang Wei, and of your loves;
Your rhythmic fisher sweet with solitude
Beneath a willow by the river stream;
Your agéd plum tree bearing lonely bloom
Beside the torrent's thunder; misty buds
Among your saplings; delicate-leaved bamboo.
My room is sweet because of you, Wang Wei,
Your tranquil and creative-fingered love
So many mounds of mournful years ago
In that cool valley where the colors lived.
My ceiling slopes a little like far mountains.

Some fall in love with voices, some with eyes,
Some men are linked together by a tear;
Others by smiles; many who cannot tell
What time the spirit passed who left the spell.
It comes to us among the winds that rise
Scattering their gifts on all things far and near.
The fields of unripe corn, the mountain lake,
And the great-hearted sea—all objects take
Their glory and their witchery from winds:
All save the few black pools the woodman finds
Far in the depths of some unsunny place,
Which stand, albeit the happy winds are out

At thy voice my heart
Wakes as a bird
Wakes in the night
With sudden rapture stirred.

At thy look my soul
Soars as a flame
Soars from the dark
Toward heaven, whence it came.

At thy love my life
Lifts from the clod
As a lily lifts
From its dark sleep toward God.

He lies in the soft earth under the grass,
Where they who love him often pass.
And his grave is under a tall young lime,
In whose boughs the pale green hop-flowers climb;
But his spirit—where does his spirit rest?
It was God who made him—God knows best.

I have a garden in the city's grime
Where secretly my heart keeps summer-time;

Where blow such airs of rapture on my eyes
As those blest dreamers know in Paradise,

Who after lives of longing come at last
Where anguish of vain love is overpast.

When the broad noon lies shadeless on the street,
And traffic roars, and toilers faint with heat,

Where men forget that ever woods were green,
The wonders of my garden are not seen.

Only at night the magic doors disclose
Its labyrinths of lavender and rose;

When from the rose mist of creation grew
God's patient waiting in your wide-set eyes,
The morning stars, and all the host that flies
On wings of love, paused at the wondrous blue
With which the Master, mindful of the hue,
Stained first the crystal dome of summer skies;
And afterward the violet that vies
With amethyst, before He fashioned you.

And I have trembled with those ancient stars,
My heart has known the flame-winged seraphs' song;
For no indifferent, dreamy eyelid bars
Me from the blue, nor veils with lashes long

My love is like a spring among the hills
Whose brimming waters may not be confined
But pour one torrent through the ways that wind
Down to a garden; there the rose distills
Its nectar; there a tall, white lily fills
Night with anointing of two lovers, blind,
Dumb, deaf, of body, spirit, and of mind
From breathless blending of far-sundered wills.

Long ere my love had reached you, hard I strove
To send its torrent through the barren fields;
I wanted you, the lilied treasure-trove
Of innocence, whose dear possession yields

When thou didst think I did not love,
Then thou didst dote on me;
Now, when thou find'st that I do prove
As kind as kind can be,
Love dies in thee.

What way to fire the mercury
Of thy inconstant mind?
Methinks it were good policy
For me to turn unkind,
To make thee kind.

Yet will I not good nature strain
To buy, at so great cost,
That which, before I do obtain,
I make account almost
That it is lost.

And though I might myself excuse
By imitating thee,
Yet will I no examples use
That may bewray in me